


We Were Never A Family

by RUNNFROMTHEAK



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canonical Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Dursley Family Bashing (Harry Potter), Good Draco Malfoy, Harry Potter Deserves Better, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Harry Potter having Slytherin traits outside of Voldemort, Harry Potter-centric, Hogwarts Eighth Year, Hurt Harry Potter, M/M, Manipulative Albus Dumbledore, POV Second Person, Post-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Pre-Slash, Self-Reflection, Vernon Dursley Being an Asshole
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:15:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24051184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RUNNFROMTHEAK/pseuds/RUNNFROMTHEAK
Summary: You have many marks, many signs of loss and pain – because pain, as you know, is taught, and the Dursleys were excellent teachers.
Relationships: Albus Dumbledore & Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Dudley Dursley & Harry Potter, Petunia Evans Dursley & Harry Potter, Vernon Dursley & Harry Potter
Comments: 25
Kudos: 277





	We Were Never A Family

**Author's Note:**

> Uhhhh oops? I'm still stuck? HP fandom is holding me hostage?

You know pain.

You know it in many ways, in many forms.

Sometimes you picture it like a dark sort-of Patronus – lingering, following, cloaked in shadows and despair in place of light and joy – stalking you. You don’t love pain, but pain loves you, and the feelings of others have always meant more to you than your own.

You know pain, but pain is not simply _known_ , it’s _taught_. And taught it was, to a knobbly-kneed boy in oversized jumpers with only a flash of green to remember his parents by. The Boy Who Lived Under the Stairs, as you’d always thought to yourself, learned pain from his blood.

_Blood magic_ , Dumbledore had said, _love_ , he’d said, was more powerful than even the darkest of spells.

But sometimes… _sometimes_ you think the darkest of spells would at least be _temporary_ pain – either you succumb to it and die, or you live to feel more pain – and eleven years seems a long time to a child who’d only known one year of love before being abandoned to hatred.

_Safe_ , Dumbledore insists, a twinkle in his eyes, _By your mother’s sacrifice_.

And it had always been enough to placate because Lily Potter is more important to you than most alive. She loved you -- truly, _desperately_ – enough so that Voldemort couldn’t kill her only child.

_Mommy loves you…Daddy loves you… You are loved, Harry, so loved…_

And you had been, in that moment, before Voldemort sent a green jet at her when she refused to move, before you’d starred at your mother’s unmoving corpse in confusion, fat tears rolling down your pale cheeks. You’d _only_ known love in Godric’s Hollow, until the scar became a mark of that loss.

You have many marks, many signs of loss and pain – because pain, as you know, is _taught_ , and the Dursleys were excellent teachers.

It was at your cousin’s hand you learned loneliness, shyness – he in his confident, long strides, you, tripping and stuttering behind him in oversized jeans and shirt. Even as he looks like a beach ball in a wig, he commands respect, authority – even if it _is_ just because he could smother someone simply by sitting on them – and you command disdain. He also teaches you envy, but by the time you learn what that word means it’s a familiar ache.

It was at your Uncle’s hand you learned fear, hesitancy – because Vernon Dursley is a man who believes in punishment, a man who indulges in life’s delicacies and the devil’s drinks (as Aunt Petunia calls them) and you are a fitting target. You, who he holds no love for, or even pity. Your Uncle can’t even summon indifference, because you are a _freak_ and _we don’t appreciate freaks around here, boy,_ and you’ve learned well enough that that means extra work, or the back of his hand if he’s particularly pissed. You agree with Aunt Petunia in those moments, trapped between your cupboard of darkness and spiders or the red-and-purple face of your Uncle’s hatred, it _is_ the devil’s drink.

It was at your Aunt’s hand you learned obedience, learned silence – because even the suffocating blackness of your cupboard is less painful than your Uncle’s anger, or your cousin’s spite. Aunt Petunia truly doesn’t care about you, which you are grateful for, in some ways. She hates your parents, your mother especially and your father as a consequence, and she dislikes you. She has the look of someone disgusted when she launders over you, teaching you to cook at the tender age of five. When you burn it and Vernon holds your hand to the stovetop, you move to the cupboard so quickly you don’t notice it. Later, you learn it was magic, but for now, you find it sad that a cupboard under the stairs infested with spiders is more comfortable than the presence of your family.

They don’t give you love or care, they don’t give you gifts or hugs, but Petunia turns her eye when you steal the broken scraps of worn-down plastic or metal that once was a toy Dudley had loved. She turns her eye when you repair them – thinking, perhaps foolishly, that if something so shattered and broken and damaged could be fixed, then perhaps _you_ with a hole where your heart should be and grief where acceptance should be – and allows you to have them, so long as they remain in your cupboard. You get good at fixing things – action figures ripped and bent so far out of shape they look like a bloody gymnast, metal trucks warped with dents the size of Dudley’s ham-sized fists, tiny cars with shattered plastic windows and missing doors – it calms you, in a way, because you’ve always feared the dark, for reasons you didn’t understand until the Dementors made you see.

You hate the darkness because it makes you relive the dead body just outside your cradle that screamed and pleaded with a madman to spare her precious son.

And you learn. Pain is taught, and pain also _teaches_.

You learn that the bacon takes exactly five minutes on each side (no more, no less) and that Uncle Vernon was always in a better mood if he came home to a spotless house and you out of sight. You do everything your Aunt shrilly tells you to, in between her mutterings of the latest gossip she’d no doubt found through her incessant and shameless gawking.

Sometimes they starve you, mocking the grumblings of your sunken-in stomach as they call you a freak.

Sometimes Dudley goes too far, and he leaves marks, scars like the broken bottle he’d thrown at you (at his _stupid_ friend’s insistence) that leaves a gushing gash where your oversized shirt doesn’t cover. Aunt Petunia patches you up, tight-lipped and quiet, but it scars anyway – a great, jagged line from your collarbone down your right shoulder.

_~~There are scars along your back from other incidents, other moments of rare quiet where you’re touched without the person’s intent being malicious, but they aren’t enough to stave off this gaping hole you feel inside.~~ _

Sometimes you think your Uncle will snap on you, will go farther than even Dudley, and possibly kill you. He has this mad glint in his eye sometimes, like a rat about to greedily devour a block of cheese. It makes you more skittish, makes you wonder what would happen if Aunt Petunia were not here to keep her husband respectable and Dudley were not here to encourage Vernon’s drinking. You think you know it would happen, and you try not to think about it. His new favorite punishment is shoving you into the closet for hours on end and allowing Dudley to stomp up and down the stairs as loudly and angrily as he wants.

But it is pain, and they taught you pain, so the pain taught you things too.

The pain taught you the value of numbness, of shutting down any sign of weakness they can prey on. Dudley can sniff out weakness like he sniffs out candy – and his waistline spoke enough of that for you to hide it down deep

The pain taught you resilience, how to avoid giving them the satisfaction of knowing the sting their words and blows carry. You hide it with annoyance, with false bravado worthy of a bloody _Oscar_ if you do say so yourself because you are _terrified_ out of your mind sometimes, wake in a cold sweat thinking of your Uncle’s anger… You force yourself to calm, and you ignore it.

The pain taught you control because your freakish incidents earn punishments, and even if Vernon rarely lays a hand on you, you still remember feeling your windpipe crushed by large sausage fingers, still feel yourself lifted from the floor and shaken up and down as your Uncle screams himself hoarse.

You’ve never known love or contentment, never known peace or joy, but the letter from Hogwarts is as close to it as you’ve ever been. You decide you don’t care if you’re a freak, if freaks don’t have to stay here, and you think the pain is over.

But it isn’t over, not really, because the Dursleys taught you pain, and now it’s the Wizarding World’s turn.

You nearly die, not that you care.

Hermione and Ron nearly die, which you very much do care about.

Draco Malfoy’s insults seem a small price to pay for this.. affection, this _friendship_ , because you’re touched without ill intent, because they smile at you without it being a grimace, because they _care_ if you’re upset or zone out, worried you’re still a small boy in a cupboard under the stairs that you’re never going to escape. Hermione goes on walks with you, and you think of telling her, but decide against it. Sometimes the way she looks at your scars makes you wonder if she does know, but she never asks.

( _ ~~But Malfoy does get to you, gets to some dark and ugly part of you that makes you think of Uncle Vernon drunk on a Monday night and angry as ever, and you **hate** Malfoy for it. Hate him for making you feel like that, for making you so mad you can’t control yourself. You notice, with no small amount of satisfaction, that it is the same in reverse~~_ ~~)~~

Pain becomes an old friend, an old _best_ friend when you come back with a freak wand to match your freak hair and freak blood.

Second-year you nearly die ( ~~oh well~~ ), and Ginny and Ron nearly die ( ~~you really need friends with some sense of self-preservation~~ ).

Third-year you nearly die ( ~~it’s a habit at this point~~ ) and Hermione and Sirius nearly die ( ~~both of which fill you with a sense of dread, because you’ve never known happiness, and now that you have you want to hoard it like a jealous dragon, guard it safely, in secret, where no one can take it from you again~~ ) but you have a Godfather now and he cares about you, thinks you’re worth something beyond the lightning bolt scar you’ve come to hate. You long to find a family in him, but Dumbledore insists you stay with the Dursleys.

 _Safe,_ he always insists, and you wonder if he knows what the word means.

Fourth-year you nearly die ( _ ~~Cedric does die~~_ ) and barely escape with your wand and the corpse. He’s back, you’d seen him, and you feel terrified. It’s a new pain, this terrible ache at Cedric’s loss, because this isn’t a _memory_ or a _possibility_ you’re grieving – you’d _known_ Cedric, been friendly with him, and now…

Fifth-year a part of you dies, and the Dursleys only get worse. They refuse to give you food, and you’d refuse to eat it even if it did exist. You know it’s unhealthy, but you can’t care anymore. This pain of grief is well taught now, and you learn nothing from it but misery. You hate it, like you want to hate Malfoy but don’t have the energy to, like you wish you didn’t have to hate the Dursleys…

Sixth-year Dumbledore dies, and you don’t shed a tear. You lost tears when you lost Sirius, and grief is well-known.

And by the time you think of your pain again… by that time you’ve already died and had your family and had it ripped away once more…

_I’m ready to die_

You’ve had to face the truth in Dumbledore’s favoritism, and your own martyrization.

You’d been meant to die – _marked as equal_ – been unsurprised to die – _does it hurt?_ – because pain is an old best friend and you had little left to lose. You could’ve been in Slytherin, but you’ve always been too headstrong for long-term strategies, and you are willing to die for love.

And you reflect on pain.

Pain taught and pain learned, pain given, and pain received…

_You have to mean it!_

And you wonder, for perhaps the first time, if Dumbledore had put you with the Dursleys _for_ that reason. A weapon needs to know pain, needs to know fear, so he’d be willing to risk more for less.

For the first time, you wonder if he’d ever cared, or if that had been a lie too.

“Potter?” Malfoy inquires, and you stare at him, at the grey eyes glinting with _something_ , something you can’t name. “What are you doing here?”

You shrug, sitting comfortably in the exact spot you’d died. You think Malfoy knows, if the confused look mixed with panic is any indication.

“Potter is this…?”

You nod, clutching your legs a bit closer to your chest. You know the war is over, know it has long been over, but you still feel every death as a weight on your soul. You still read every name on the memorial as a personal failure, and for some reason, your own death is the calmest thought you have.

“Why?”

You bite your lip, unsure of how to explain. Malfoy sighs, and plops next to you, leaning into you – because the war is over, and you need to remember that, and you’re not the boy under the staircase anymore – without hesitation.

A week ago, you would’ve put up a weak protest, but you know better now. Malfoy, when comfortable, is like a clingy octopus. You’ve carried him between classes before when he refused to let you go.

“Harry?” He inquires, and it’s your name that makes you look at him, makes you look at the way the forest glows in his eyes.

You look away quickly.

“I thought the pain would be over,” You manage, nearly choking on the words as they roll off your tongue. “I thought it wouldn’t hurt anymore. And it didn’t…”

But wait, that sounds _bad_ and Malfoy’s face tells him it sounds bad…

“I don’t want to die,” You assure him, adding a private _not anymore_ where he can’t hear, “I just… don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”

He smiles at that, a soft grin you find yourself hypnotized by dawning his stunning features.

“None of us do,” and he takes your hand to squeeze it, gently tracing the lines you have seared in your brain:

_I must not tell lies_

“Doesn’t mean you need to be alone, Scarhead.”

You shrug.

He rolls his eyes before standing, brushing the twigs and dirt off his uniform before offering you a hand.

You take it, feeling a spark run through you at the touch.

“Alright, Potter?” He asks.

You send him another grin.

Pain is taught and pain is learned.

Hatred can be something within, or something created, but you have better things to worry about than a broken childhood.

“Never better,” you reply, and as you walk back to Hogwarts, you think not of the pain you’ve felt and the lessons you’ve learned, but the way Malfoy’s smile might taste against yours.

**Author's Note:**

> Thoughts?


End file.
